1. Cyberfair category:  [Local attractions]

2、Description of Our Community

 Luchou City is situated on the west bank of the downstream of Tamshui River, and is bounded by the river on the northeast side facing Shilin District of Taipei City. It is adjoined to Wugu Township on the west side, and Sanchung City on the southeast side in a vertical rhombus shape. The area is 8,321 sq.km, and is only larger than Yonghe City among all 29 townships and cities in Taipei County. Because of the convenient geographic location of Luchou, it is the main path connecting Bali and Wugu to Taipei City. Therefore, Luchou Food Market is an important gathering place for the local residents.

 

Yung Lien Temple by Luchou Market is the religion center of Luchou's citizens.

Impassioned shop-keepers attract people to be in Luchou Market. 

3、Summary of Our Project

       Luchou Market has 30 years of history. It became the shopping center of Bali and Wugu during 1960~1970s due to its convenient geographic location. Through interview and field investigation, we attempt to understand the history of Luchou Food Market. By interviewing with the vendors and customers, we try to discover the relationship between the market and the local life, and reveal the touching life stories took place in the market. By experiencing the peddling work in the food market, we aim to explore the interactive relationship between the vendors and customers. Lastly, we promote the Luchou Food Market on our campus to help all teachers and students understanding the close relationship between the market and our daily life.

4.Our computer and Internet access:

     The network of our school adopts 100MB fiber circuit connectingTaipei County Educational Network Center, and computer network facilities at home mostly surf the Net through broadband ADSL. 

 

Computer classroom of school is equipped with multimedia and Wide Band.

Most of students use computer classroom for data processing.

5. Problems we had to overcome:

 

The closer to the end of Cyberfair research, the more opportunities we will have to see the way we went across together, whether we still have some inveterate difficulties though we have exerted ourselves?  Whether some aspects still have room for improvement? All these questions deserve our attentions, to this end, we had following discussions together: 

    Problem 1: insufficient life experience

   When we visit the shop keepers, every vendor would give us some life experiences and words of cheer, maybe team members' insufficiency of life experience, they could not get deep perception. 

Way to overcome: teacher explains and leads in good time, and gives stories, examples and explanation. 

      We will prepare semi-open questions ahead of interviews, we interview the shop keepers directly. Sometimes we could not understand the shop keeper's answer, then our teacher would participate in theinterview in good time, and after that teacher would take some familiar stories as examples for us at meetings, hoping we could obtain apperceptive study.

     Team members don't understand that the grandma vendor of hot pot ingredients says she had nothing pleasurable over the past thirty years of doing business. 

 Problem 2: heavy schoolwork pressure     

    The schooltime is longer and there are more school activities in higer grade, on one hand we need to train for the popular songs and dance competition, on the other hand we need to participate in the poster and slogan competition, furthermore, we need to go to the after-school class and talent class, so we have meetings at lunch break and communicate with each other by telephone.  We could only visit shop keepers group by group on our holidays, because some students went to talent class on Saturday and some went to talent class on Sunday, they had to manage their time very well for diaries and perceptions. 

 

Way to overcome: adopt division of labor and cooperation, check out all team members' hours can be spent on research.
    Some team members ask for leave of routine meeting held on Tuesday.  Although the research needs our sacrifice sometimes, we always hope we can give attention to all things as best as we can. Therefore, we check out in what period after school the team members are available for the research through discussions with them, and then divide into groups by themselves. Work duty is allocated by each group through coordination. Though the research work is heavy, we can complete it finally.

Problem 3: teacher's night is like day

      Due to the teacher need to give classes or have meetings for most of the time at daytime, while some courses require for active courses and preparation; and students' schoolwork shall be corrected as usual, so all Cyberfair activities have to be carried out at night or during holidays. 

 

Way to overcome: have nourishing supper together

       Thank school for providing rooms and equipments of Student Affairs Division, which enabled us to handle Cyberfair affairs, teachers always had supper together and then continued to work, they had thick revolutionary emotion.

We still remember teachers always busied themselves till it's in the still of night during exhibitions...

Problem 4: limited ability for interview and research

    Awkward silence often occurs in interview, and we seem to be still lack of questioning sensibility, teachers always need to step in the interview if necessary, or train us for it at the review after the interview, that let us deeply feel that we still need to strengthen our interview and research ability!

Way to overcome: consult specialists, read frequently and do and learn at the same time

      In the course of research, our teacher said the interview skill was the most difficult one to teach due to he himself didn't know much about it, so we had to consult books and specialists frequently. For example, once we read from a book about research approach that interviewing was like a miner digging mine, raised questions towards wide direction at the very start, and then kept on seeking critical questions based on the answers of respondents and the questions would go deeper and deeper, when teacher told us this example, we seemed to understand the interview skill comparatively. 

     Perhaps, time is a key of enriching our various abilities, if we had another opportunity, absolutely we would make persistent efforts. 

 

6. Afterthoughts:  

      As long as you are willing to make mental efforts and physical efforts, you could initiate a sky of your own in whatever you do!  Even if selling vegetables is also living in wisdom and significance!